MarketPlace - APM

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

It’s 5 a.m., and I’ve just entered London’s New Covent Garden Market — the United Kingdom’s largest flower market — from the parking lot. I’m greeted by bright lights and rows upon rows of blooms: Italian ranunculus, Dutch tulips, eucalyptus and English ivy. This place has it all. (Kind of reminds me of a place David Brancaccio visited not too long ago.)

The roots of the New Convent Garden Market stretch back to the 17th century and, these days, it shifts $50 million of flowers annually. And I’ve gotten up at the crack of dawn to find out what goes into all those sales.

First stop: the stall run by Luke Gilbert of Green and Bloom. By now, he’s been awake since midnight, waiting for deliveries from across Europe.

“You never get used to it, though. Doesn’t really get any easier,” he said.

Luke Gilbert of Green and Bloom stands amid rows of bouquets. (Courtesy BBC)

His trick of the trade? Buy fast and stay nimble. Sometimes, he doesn’t know the exact price he’ll pay until the auction in Holland happens just hours before.

“If it goes too high, people just won’t buy it. So you can roughly say how much it’s going to be, but every now and again, we do get some shocks.”

Brexit red tape can be the biggest shock of them all. The U.K.’s split from the European Union has meant lots of fresh border checks. A key one for plants came in last year, with further phases rolling out too. The U.K. government has forecast that border charges could cost British businesses hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

“It’s also affected some of the delivery times,” Gilbert said. “There’s a lot more paperwork they have to go through.”

Further inside, Paul Fairhead from Evergreen Exterior Services is hunched over the counter, surveying his bulbs in pots. His main business is supplying window boxes to offices and pubs across London.

Paul Fairhead’s family has been in the flower business for generations. (Courtesy BBC)

“Brexit has been the biggest pain,” he said. “The government has brought in this new check down at Sevington. They’re taking lorries [trucks] in at 3 o’clock in the morning and pulling them over, but their staff aren’t starting work till 8 o’clock in the morning. So the lorry has been held for five hours,” he said. “We shut at 10 o’clock, so we’ve lost the day’s sales.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. I meet Natalie Keller, a florist with a stall in Barnes in southwest London, eyeing a big bucket of colourful tulips to add some color to her bunches.

“I’m normally back to the store for about 9 o’clock,” she said. “We prepare and condition all the flowers and get it out on display for everyone to see and hopefully buy.”

And here’s a trick I picked up today: If the flowers aren’t the right hue, you can always paint them. That’s exactly what wedding florist Susie Ball from Peckham Rye will be doing to her hydrangeas later.

“Because they’re not quite in season, we’ve got to paint them a little bit to get the color right for the event,” she said.

Long nights, early mornings and a constant race against the clock — traders here rely on a delicate supply chain that’s become more complex since Brexit.

Bunches of flowers at London’s new Covent Garden Flower Market. (Courtesy BBC)

Find all of our Tricks of the Trade stories accumulating here.

The economy gained nearly 63,000 restaurant and bar jobs in December and January. But the industry had no time to get comfortable because it lost nearly all of them by the end of February. 

In the grand scheme of things, this change wasn’t insane, and the numbers are still preliminary, but on face value the sector hadn’t seen drops that big since the dark days of the pandemic. 

Restaurant and bar jobs seem to have roughly tracked restaurant and bar sales over the past three years, and sure enough, retail sales in the industry have mostly fallen since November — and they dropped sharply, by 1.5%, in February.

“We definitely were not as busy as we would have liked to have been in January and February,” Jason Smith said. He’s the owner and chef at Cantina 18 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s been there for 15 years. North Carolina’s hiring trends mirrored the national numbers pretty closely.

Smith puts some of this down to weather. In January, it was sub-zero or snowing all the way down into Florida.

“I have a lot of empty nesters and, you know, older clientele, and when it’s, you know, 25 degrees five days in a row, a lot of those folks just don’t go out, understandably,” he said. “We closed, I think, two nights and closed two or three shifts. You know, the snow’s, it’s expensive.”

But it may have been more than just the snow at work here.

“February is where we start to see a definitive shift in consumer behavior,” said R. J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai. Placer uses anonymized mobile device data to analyze foot traffic, and Hottovy zeroed in on restaurants.  

“Visitation trends for really every restaurant category were down year over year,” he found.

This was around the same time that consumer sentiment surveys showed people were getting extra-anxious about the economy. Hottovy said that’s not a coincidence.

“People are asking a lot of questions about the direction of the economy. I think that’s certainly had an impact on things. And the reason why we believe that is because it was so widespread across a lot of retail and restaurant categories,” he said.

The possibility of tariffs pushing up prices is one source of that anxiety for customers. It’s also a source of anxiety for the restaurants themselves. Especially if they get certain foods from, say, Mexico.

“I am a lowly guacamole salesman,” said Smith. “I also am a lowly tequila salesman, so I am more than puckered up about it, yes. But nothing’s happened yet, so let’s just hold on before we panic.”

Some restaurants are trying to plan — negotiating with vendors, consolidating products, planning large buys to stock up.  

Amber Moshakos, president of LM Restaurants, which has 34 locations in the Southeast, said she’s spent a lot of time and energy on planning.

“You know, if we get tariffs on tequila and Mexican beer, all right, we have a formula, we know how to respond, we know what to do,” she said.

Planning for specific tariffs is tough when they change by the day or even the hour.

“And so instead of trying to get all wrapped up in this go-no-go, stop-start mentality, our focus is just creating an agile organization. So no matter what happens this year, we’re prepared,” she said.

The one thing Moshakos said she cannot do is pass costs on to customers. “It’s going to be our last option.”

That’s the bind a lot of restaurants are in — customers might just lose it if menu prices start soaring again.

“The primary headwind to customer traffic formation at restaurants has been inflation,” said David Portalatin, food industry adviser for market research firm Circana. Price hikes are a no-go for another reason: The restaurant landscape has become more competitive.

“There’s actually more restaurant locations, but less traffic than in 2019,” he said.

Restaurants do have options, especially if just a few of their ingredients are hit by tariffs. “They can reformulate their recipes, they can swap product in and out,” said Rich Shank, senior principal at Technomic.

And despite the rough start, a lot of analysts say 2025 may turn out OK for restaurants. “We are predicting modest levels of growth this year,” Shank said.

Because, he said, people still need to eat, and after all the adapting restaurants have had to do over the last five years, they’ve become pretty good at it.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in a recent Radio France interview that the current economic and geopolitical situation marks “the beginning of a march towards independence” for Europe. With the increase in U.S. tariffs, she said, the Continent can come together to take greater control of its destiny.

This comes as Europe grapples with macroeconomic challenges — notably, paltry economic growth. The EU could look at U.S. trade policy as a kind of opportunity.

“Make America Great Again may actually be MEGA — Make Europe Great Again,” said Harold James, a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University.

He said Europe has its share of problems: an aging population, inflation and a relatively low level of investment in innovative businesses. 

“It’s not that Europe doesn’t produce good ideas,” said James. “But on the other hand, they haven’t really translated that into mass marketing of these products.”

But now, he said, Europe is putting more money into areas like defense spending. 

“This is not going to be traditional expenditure on boots and leather belts and … trench-digging equipment,” he said. “The war of the future is about drones and about electronic warfare.”

James said there’s hope that some producers in sectors that will likely be hurt by U.S. tariffs, like automakers, could convert to high-tech defense manufacturing. 

“They have a lot of skills and a lot of historical legacies that they can use in terms of responding to a new defense buildup,” he said.

But before the EU starts printing baseball caps emblazoned with “MEGA,” warns Ángel Talavera at Oxford Economics, building this kind of high-tech ecosystem would be really hard. 

“You hear this very, very often in many countries, like, we’re going to turn this area into the Silicon Valley of Country X, but it doesn’t happen very often, and it doesn’t happen because it’s very difficult,” he said.

Talavera said there are lots of things the European Union could do that would make it easier for companies to grow across boundaries, like make the banking system less fragmented. 

“You have a bank operating in Spain and the same bank operating in Portugal, which is next door, really, and they have to be operating under two different licenses. You cannot have a bank account that is the same one in both countries, things like that,” he said.

But getting political buy-in for large-scale changes to industries like banking would be tough, said Shannon O’Neil, senior vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Politics is never easy, and it’s never easy when you’re bringing together more than two dozen countries with all of their politics,” she said.

It might not be so much a march toward independence, she said, and more of a walk. Maybe a crawl. 

Monday is the final trading day of the first quarter. So far, markets have been volatile, thanks to all the uncertainty around tariffs — and by extension, U.S. growth. But the stock market isn’t the only thing that’s been falling this year. So has the value of the dollar.

Year to date, the greenback is down about 4%. That also reflects concerns about where the economy’s headed.

A lot of investors went into the year with a pretty optimistic outlook for the U.S. economy, said Juan Perez, director of trading at Monex USA.

He said they were hoping “that there was going to be a lot of policies coming from the Trump administration, and they’re pro-business, they’re pro-growth.” 

But then the trade wars kicked off, Perez said investors’ optimism quickly faded.

“The ultimate consensus is that trade wars will affect growth,” Perez said. “And right now, the narrative is very much not so positive for the United States.”

Investors who are nervous about economic growth often react by moving their money out of relatively risky assets, like stocks.

“And that flow, if it’s significant enough among enough investors, can actually alter the trajectory of a currency,” said Christopher Vecchio, head of futures and foreign exchange at the research company TastyLive.

He said that’s because U.S. stocks and other American financial assets are bought and sold in dollars. So when demand for stocks falls, demand for dollars does too.

Vecchio said a lot of foreign investors are starting to think twice about whether they want to invest in the U.S. to begin with.

“Those foreign investors have been selling their stocks. They’ve been taking those U.S. dollars, converting them back to euros, to pounds, what have you, and investing in their domestic markets once again,” said Vecchio. 

Another factor that’s been luring money away from the dollar is the yield on other countries’ government bonds, said Vishy Tirupattur, chief fixed income strategist at Morgan Stanley.

“So for example, in Japan, local currency government bonds in Japan are yielding meaningfully greater than what they were yielding six months ago,” said Tirupattur. 

The thing is, Tirupattur said tariffs could cause other countries’ economies to slow down too. And that means their government bonds might not keep attracting investors.

“The question really is: Will the tariffs weaken their growth prospects more? Would their central banks have to cut rates more than they would have otherwise?” said Tirupattur. 

And if that happens, the dollar’s value could start to strengthen again.

It’s not just you — it’s gotten a lot harder to afford a new house.

If you want to buy a typical home in 2025, your household income has to be about $117,000, according to a new study on housing affordability from Bankrate. Just before the pandemic, you needed $78,000. That’s a 50% increase in five years. All while wages have gone up just 27%.

There are two big reasons homes are so difficult to afford, said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather: “It’s a combination of high prices and high mortgage rates.”

With higher home prices come higher property taxes and home insurance premiums.

On top of that, mortgage rates are nearly double what they were five years ago.

“The barriers to homeownership are really high especially for people who are borrowing,” Fairweather said.

You know who’s more likely to borrow money to pay a mortgage? First-time home buyers.

“Twenty-six percent of all houses purchased in 2024 were all cash, and they’re squeezing out that first-time home buyer who has … a 9% down payment,” said Mark Eppli, a visiting professor of real estate at Georgetown University. 

He said that’s partly why the average age of a first-time homebuyer has gone up from 32 in 2020 to 38 today. With multiple bidders on limited housing stock, they just can’t compete with the empty nesters.

“If you got a cash buyer in one hand and a buyer who needs a 91% loan to value loan and get approved for financing, and you’re selling your house, who do you sell to?” he said.

Home prices are expected to go up another 5% this year, according to Bankrate analyst Jeff Ostrowski. Inventory remains tight. But he said we may have reached the boundaries of affordability.

“The days of bidding wars and 30 people putting in an offer on an unremarkable suburban house … those days are gone,” he said.

Those days might be gone, but better days aren’t coming yet either. 

“The lesson of the past four years has been: It doesn’t look like a great time to buy a house now, but it’s probably going to get worse,” Ostrowski said. It’s hard to time the market, he added.

Redfin’s Daryl Fairweather said if you can’t buy, that’s not terrible, because the rental market is more affordable right now. She said renters should largely be safe from major rent hikes this year.

Back in February, when President Trump announced sweeping tariffs at both the Canadian and Mexican borders, “Marketplace” reporter and host Kristin Schwab looked at how small businesses were coping with the uncertainty and the new costs. Among the people she spoke with was Daniella Velazquez de León, a general manager at Organics Unlimited, a banana grower and wholesaler based in San Diego. Since the business imports most of its supply from Mexico, the proposed 25% tariff was going to hit hard.

And then, most of the promised tariffs against Mexico and Canada were rolled back, but only temporarily. Tariffs are currently set to resume on April 2.

Velazquez de León rejoined Kristin Schwab to catch up ahead of that deadline. A transcript of their conversation is below.

Kristin Schwab: Give me an update. How has business been?

Daniella Velazquez de León: I mean, for the most part, we’ve been having a good year so far. What’s scary is all of the uncertainty around tariffs. Everything could change from one day to the next, and it’s just been a lot of whiplash from February to March and now April.

Schwab: We talked, I think, last in February when tariffs were on the horizon and you were figuring out what to do. And then a lot happened after that. On March 4, the Trump administration enacted a 25% tariff on products coming in from Canada and Mexico. And then March 6, just two days later, he rolled those back. Before we get to the now, can you tell me what those 48 hours were like if you can remember?

Velazquez de León: They were pretty horrible. We had prepared for it as best we could, but there’s very little guidance. We were talking to our customs brokers, our Customs Brokers were talking to CBP, and even CBP didn’t have clear direction on how to handle this. And in those two days alone, we paid over $14,000 in tariffs.

Schwab: Wow. And then, just like that, they kind of temporarily went away. Does that mean your sort of chaos went away? Or what’s been happening for the last month or so?

Velazquez de León: It feels like it’s been psychological torture. For the last couple months, we’ve done as much preparing as we can, and even just the costs of preparing have been crazy. I mean, we’re a small business. We got an invoice from our legal team for almost $40,000 just in guidance for how to approach these tariffs. And even so, we didn’t have a concrete, clear direction of “this is exactly how you should be managing this, how you should be doing the valuation.” And so it feels like the fate of our future is in the hands of the president and what he decides this week.

Schwab: Well, these tariffs are meant to be back on in just a couple days. What does that mean for you?

Velazquez de León: I mean, we’re trying to stay optimistic. I’m hopeful that we’re going to come together and figure out a way to survive and get through to the other side. But if I’m more realistic than optimistic, that seems very difficult if these tariffs do go into place all the way.

Schwab: What are you hearing from the grower side, from these farmers?

Velazquez de León: They’re very concerned, all of these growers that we’ve been working with for generations. My great-grandfather was a banana grower. It’s a whole region that depends on this commodity to survive and to thrive, and, if these tariffs go into place, that could completely destroy the whole economy in that region. And at retail stores, it’s pretty much forbidden to go anywhere above the 99 cent mark for organic bananas. So growers know that. Again, it’s make it or break it for their businesses and their communities.

Schwab: You know, you just talked about being a fourth-generation member of your family to work at this company. What comes up when you think about this time and what it means for the future of your business?

Velazquez de León: It makes me a little emotional because it’s my family’s legacy, and it’s what we’ve dedicated our lives to. It’s our story. And we’ve made a name for ourselves in the industry and also in our growing communities, so it’s not just our businesses, our employees, our customers, on the line. It’s also all of these programs that we’ve dedicated this business to on the line. So honestly, it’s kind of an emotional roller coaster these past few months and going into this week.

About an hour outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, construction is underway for a brand-new Newton-Conover High School. Superintendent Aron Gabriel said it will serve both small towns, which are just off the interstate in rural area.

Gabriel is optimistic that the new building, with its spacious classrooms and new athletic facilities, will attract new students. In the five years it took to plan and build this school, student enrollment in this small district has dropped 11%.

“We’ve just got to figure out how to get people to follow, and then more people to have babies and bring them here,” Gabriel said.

Now a school that was meant to prevent overcrowding isn’t likely to be crowded.

The school district population has dropped 11% in the five years it’s taken to plan and build Newton-Conover High, meant to prevent overcrowding. (Liz Schlemmer/WUNC)

Gabriel doesn’t know why. There are no competing charter schools, and it’s not like the town recently lost a factory. But fewer kids keep showing up for kindergarten.

“I’m still scratching my head, but I can’t control it,” Gabriel said.

Public school enrollment peaked in the United States in 2019 and has been falling at many school districts across the country ever since. When the pandemic hit, some families flocked to homeschooling or private schools. Some wanted to avoid catching COVID, while others wanted to avoid masking or remote learning. Whatever their reasons, five years later, public schools still have fewer students than they did before the pandemic.

But school choice isn’t the only reason why. Larger demographic trends are also changing the economics at public schools, especially in small towns. 

Gabriel receives annual enrollment projections from the state that tell him how many students to expect each fall, but they’re based on historical trends and are not a crystal ball.

Aron Gabriel, superintendent at Newton-Conover City Schools, on the site of the new high school. (Liz Schlemmer/WUNC)

Researchers at Carolina Demography at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, calculate those projections. The center’s director, Nathan Dollar, hasn’t analyzed what’s happening in Newton-Conover specifically, but he said there are three factors causing enrollment decline across the state.

“No. 1 is births. You have market share. And then you have migration,” Dollar explained.

For any school district, you have to look at all three, starting with births, he said. “Fertility is on the decline everywhere.”

The birth rate in North Carolina and the country has been falling for almost 20 years, then it took a nosedive with the pandemic. As far as migration, North Carolina has been gaining residents from other states, but they’re not coming in droves to rural places like Newton.

“Most of the people that are moving to North Carolina are moving to our urban centers, and they’re in those prime working ages … so they’re the most likely to have children,” Dollar said.

Then the last factor is what Dollar calls “market share” — people leaving a particular school district for homeschooling, charter schools or private schools.

All three of these forms of schooling are on the rise in the state. The problem for school districts like Newton-Conover is that all these forces are hitting them at once, affecting their bottom line.

At the end of his day, Gabriel stops by South Newton Elementary, a school that has been losing students.

“The way our funding flows is per kid, and as the per-kid numbers go down, so does our funding,” Gabriel said.

Most of that funding goes to pay educators. Gabriel hasn’t yet let go of teachers, but he has cut about half of the district’s administrative positions in the last five years. That means some staff — including Chief Academic Officer Tammy Brown — now do the work of several people.

Gabriel bumps into Brown while she is helping students in the car pickup line. The two of them have known each other since elementary school.

Said Gabriel: “She was in first grade when I was in kindergarten, so we’ve known each other —”

“Forever!” Brown pipes up, finishing Gabriel’s sentence.

Tammy Brown, chief academic officer at Newton-Conover City Schools, is doing the work of several people since budget cuts tied to falling enrollment have reduced staff. (Liz Schlemmer/WUNC)

Gabriel explains that Brown has recently taken on management of federal programs and English as a second language services, joking that she does 50 jobs now.

“About that,” Brown replied.

“And if she stands here long enough, I’ll give her another one,” Gabriel said with a chuckle.

They’re joking, but Gabriel is visiting the school this particular afternoon to meet with staff about more possible cuts. He said he can’t name any positions yet, because if he did, everyone in town would know who’s at risk of losing their job.

As the district cuts staff who manage programs that serve the most vulnerable kids, Gabriel is worried it will affect the students who are still here.

“You worry — am I going to be able to provide the same level of service?” Gabriel said.

Big picture, Gabriel said: Drops in enrollment lead to cuts, and that impacts the kids — especially the ones who need the most support.

This is just one of the stories from our “I’ve Always Wondered” series, where we tackle all of your questions about the world of business, no matter how big or small. Ever wondered if recycling is worth it? Or how store brands stack up against name brands? Check out more from the series here.

Reader Ali Asghar-Ali from Houston asks: 

When people talk about savings and expenditures, like “save 20% of your income” or “spend no more than 30% of your income on rent/mortgage,” are they referring to your net or gross income? 

When you’re deciding which apartment you should rent, some experts advise using your pre-tax, or gross income as a baseline.  

“It’s just much simpler to use gross income in any kind of calculation because it’s a stable number,” said Vanessa Perry, interim dean at the George Washington University School of Business.

Using take-home pay can complicate your budgeting plans because everyone’s tax obligation is different and subject to change, Perry said. But while gross income is a great starting point, experts say you can adjust your budget to your take-home pay depending on your goals and any major life changes you experience.

“People need to realize that these are rules of thumb. They are not intended to be precise,” Perry said. 

If you’re about to have a baby, for example, your tax bill may drop because you’re adding a dependent to your household, Perry said. “You may actually have a bit more flexibility than is captured in one of these rules of thumb,” Perry said. 

But when that child grows up and moves out, you lose your dependent, which could lead to a higher tax bill, Perry said. 

There are some budgeting models, like the 50-30-20 rule, that do recommend using take-home pay. This plan suggests allocating 50% of your income toward your needs, like shelter, transportation and insurance. That leaves 30% for wants, like vacations and clothing, and 20% for savings and/or debt. 

Some experts say that 20% should go toward savings even if you’ve already contributed to your 401(k) or similar retirement account, like WealthBuild CEO Ramona Ortega.

If you can, Ortega recommends setting aside 20% of your after-tax income for emergency savings and investment vehicles like a Roth individual retirement account. Unlike a traditional IRA or 401(k), a Roth allows you to invest post-tax dollars and withdraw your earnings tax-free after age 59.5 (provided you’ve had the account five years). 

“Money has to actually be put to work so that you’re beating inflation and you’re beating the value of the dollar,” Ortega said. 

These investments have historically beat inflation in the long run, even when the stock market gets volatile. Recent market turmoil has dinged retirement accounts in the short-term, but there are always fluctuations in your 401(k). Most people just don’t look at it, Ortega said. 

“Investing in the market is still the most viable option for a return on your dollar,” Ortega said. 

These rules don’t make sense for everyone’s personal finance goals, and you may decide to deviate from the recommended amount. 

Many Americans are struggling to limit the portion of their income that goes toward housing. Conventional wisdom often says 30% of gross income is a good target. More than 21 million renters spent more than that in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

If Americans are spending more of their paycheck on housing, there’s little headroom for unexpected expenses, said personal finance expert Zina Kumok. Your water heater could break down, or you might live in a hurricane-prone area and need repairs, she said. 

That 30% target can also adjust down in an area with a lower cost of living. Don’t feel pressured to spend more in that case — instead you could earmark extra funds for other major expenses, like child care, Kumok said.

So these budget guidelines are just that. But  they can be useful to create “habits or systems that make it less overwhelming,” Ortega said. 

Whichever rules you use, Kumok said you may have to revise your budget as you better understand  your spending habits.

Many people end up “disappointed and disillusioned” if they’re not meeting unrealistic goals they’ve set for themselves, Kumok said. 

“So what I say is, ideally, look at the past three months of spending. Get that average for each basic category, and then build your budget around that,” Kumok said.

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At a single-family home in the LA suburb of Canoga Park, installers are parading in and out of Jake Olson and Amy Ball’s house, tossing anything that uses water, and installing brand new fixtures.

Olson applied to be part of a pilot project after seeing an ad in a utility newsletter. His is one of 30 homes in Los Angeles chosen for the project. Half stay the same. The other half get free, brand new water-efficient appliances, faucets, showerheads and toilets, plus detergents and cleaning supplies optimized for low water use. In exchange, Olson has released full access to his household’s water usage data.

“I was in an apartment for 17 years and didn’t have a water bill. They paid the water and then we got this house and we were watering grass and water bills would come and I was like, ‘Wow, how is this reality? What is this life? I do not want this,'” he said.

The people looking at his data are part of an international coalition of companies, water agencies and nonprofits called 50L Home. And they have a bold claim: It’s possible to reduce water consumption to just 13 gallons per day — or 50 liters — and not feel like you’re sacrificing anything.

Jake Olson and Amy Ball received new, water-efficient appliances to test how low their water use could go without trying harder to conserve. (Caleigh Wells/Marketplace)

“We’re doing behavioral analysis, we’re looking at every end use. We’re in their homes kind of on a regular basis,” said project manager Maureen Erbeznik with the United States Green Building Council California.

The World Health Organization says each person needs a minimum of 13 gallons of water a day to meet basic needs such as drinking, bathing, washing dishes and cleaning clothes. But the average American uses more than 80 gallons of water per day. In many parts of the country, that’s simply unsustainable.

Since this project is all about seeing how little water a typical family can use while behaving typically, Ball and Olson were under strict orders not to try harder to save water. They were already trying pretty hard. They replaced their lawn with drought tolerant plants, they try to only run the dishwasher when it’s full. Although, Ball admits she tends to “luxuriate” in the shower.

“I like to turn up the heat really hot and just be in there,” she said. Olson said that with a toddler in the house, some of the only alone time they get is while showering.

One year later, the homes in the study used half as much water as the average home in Los Angeles. Olson did notice some differences in the appliances. But he said none of them were bad.

“The showerhead itself is actually two inches larger than the one that we had before. And honestly, that’s one of my favorite things that got swapped out. The water pressure is the same, if not better,” Olson said.

But that reduction still wasn’t enough to hit that 13-gallon mark. After a year, they were using about 23 gallons per person.

“Our name is definitely aspirational. There’s a lot more savings to be had. We are just getting started,” said Gregory Holliday, director of 50L Home. “We didn’t tell anybody about how to use these products. We didn’t encourage them to try to save water.”

Holliday said this study isn’t over yet. In phase two, it will introduce recycling water to get that usage number down even more.

There is some good news in Friday morning’s data from the Commerce Department: American households’ income is still growing. It was up 0.8% in February — twice what analysts were expecting. 

But there’s a bit of a red flag buried in the report. Consumer spending came in weaker than expected and the personal savings rate is up, both of which are signs consumers could be feeling the need to hang on to their money. 

Over the past few years, consumers have been telling pollsters how fed up they are with inflation. Then they keep right on buying stuff, said Stephen Brown, deputy chief at Capital Economics. 

“You know, the link between consumer confidence and spending has broken down in recent years,” said Brown.

But in Friday’s data on income and spending, he sees clues about ways consumer behavior could be catching up with our anxious mood. 

Clues like a bump in spending on certain goods — like vehicles, appliances and furniture — all of which could be affected by tariffs.

And, said Shannon Grein, an economist at Wells Fargo, there was a dip in spending on services. 

“That’s considered a weakness just because services consumption is typically very steady, even in the worst of times,” said Grein.

It’s steady because services in this context include housing and health care, which don’t fluctuate much.

This pullback is driven in part by slower spending on discretionary services, like traveling and going out to eat. 

“It’s no longer this whole YOLO, revenge spending kind of thing,” said Ted Rossman, an analyst at Bankrate. Those forces that have helped buoy economic growth in recent years, he said, even through a pandemic, global conflicts and high inflation.

“It feels like something new is happening, that the story is starting to change,” he said.

Rossman said U.S. consumers might finally be running out of steam. And if prices keep rising, they might not come to the rescue this time.

Legislators in Florida have advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws in the state. 

It would allow all 16- and 17-year-olds — and some 14- and 15-year-olds — to work full time, including on school days, and work overnight shifts, as well as making other changes.

Kids can work in Florida now, if they’re at least 14. 

But there are restrictions on how many hours they can work per day and per week when school’s in session, according to Robert Latham at the University of Miami. 

“We also limit the time that they can work, capping it off at 11 o’clock on a school night,” he said. 

This bill would lift many of those limits.

Florida has a shortage of workers, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has said teenagers could fill some of that gap rather than immigrants.  

Latham is skeptical. “Our immigrant workforce is in fields and farming and agriculture, in kitchens,” he said. “These are hard jobs.” 

But teenagers in struggling families might sign up for long hours at hard jobs. 

Sadaf Knight at the nonprofit Florida Policy Institute said that having fewer protections for them could be harmful. 

“Juggling school and juggling a job, coming to school exhausted and tired, not able to focus, will really hamstring them in their academic achievement,” said Knight. 

And, she added, that could have lifelong economic consequences.

Student loans and repayments remained stable through the end of last year. That’s the headline from the latest New York Federal Reserve report.

Not terrible news, and yet student loan experts aren’t celebrating. They’re bracing for bad news to come.

There are a few reasons the total $1.6 trillion in U.S. student loan debt hasn’t gone up much: Biden-era forgiveness programs are one. A decline in higher education enrollment is another.

But Dalié Jiménez, who runs the Student Loan Law Initiative at the University of California, Irvine, said the biggest reason was the pandemic-era interest pause.

“For three-plus years, student loan borrowers who had federal loans didn’t have to make any payments on their student loans, and their balances weren’t increasing because interest wasn’t being assessed,” said Jiménez. 

But that relief ended at the end of September. Now, nearly 10 million student loan borrowers are past due.

“This isn’t bad news relative to, I think, the really bad news that are coming,” said Jiménez. 

Because once you’re 90 days late on a loan payment, it can hurt your credit score. At that point, the debt is reported as “delinquent.”

The Fed said that, based on these numbers, delinquency rates of 90 days or more will likely be higher than they were before the pandemic.

“I’ve had a lot of borrowers be like, ‘Oh my goodness, my credit just dropped, and I wasn’t paying any attention to my student loans until I saw my credit score start to drop,’” said Betsy Mayotte, founder of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors. 

She said the delinquency spike is serious.

“The 90-day delinquency numbers are not just a canary in that coal mine. That’s a whole flock of birds in that coal mine. So we have a big concern about future default,” said Mayotte. 

Default is what comes after delinquency. For most loans, that happens after it’s delinquent for 270 days. The loan can get sent to collections, and the government can garnish social security benefits or wages — it’s way worse.

And that rate wasn’t great before the pandemic either.

“Before the pandemic, a student loan borrower defaulted every 26 seconds, more than a million people defaulted on a loan every year,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Loan Protection Center. 

He points to two recent executive orders from President Donald Trump. One restricts a program that forgives debt for workers in nonprofit and public sector jobs after a decade of service. The other pauses affordable repayment plans. These two moves are not reflected in this data, and Pierce said they will make even more borrowers default.

“We expect that to be double or triple in the best case scenario here, it’s possible that 5 million student loan borrowers could default this year,” said Pierce.

It takes about nine months to default on a student loan, so those notices likely won’t start showing up until later this year.

Crocs recently reported record annual revenue of $4.1 billion for 2024, up 4% from the year prior. The company’s rising numbers are partly due to its resurging popularity among younger consumers. 

Crocs, the slip-on plastic clogs with a bunch of holes on top, were marketed as boat shoes when they launched back in 2002 — and were once named one of the “50 Worst Inventions” of all time by Time magazine — but in recent years they’ve become a Gen Z fashion staple.

Anthony Russo is a 17-year-old student at McLean High School in Northern Virginia. He owns five pairs of Crocs, which he likes to wear in what he calls “sport mode” by sliding the heel strap that normally rests on top of the shoes to sit behind his heel.

“I like how you can put them into sport mode, so you can like, run and also just wear them leisurely,” Russo said. 

Pricing and comfort are the biggest reasons why Russo’s age group loves Crocs. Classic clogs cost just $50 a pair, making them a cheaper alternative to sneakers that take more effort to put on.

“I think people more nowadays are preferring the more comfortable wear over wearing nicer clothing that might be uncomfortable,” Russo said. 

Russo and his friends don’t think Crocs are ugly, in fact, one of his friends owns over 30 pairs. But they might be in the minority. Some researchers even say Crocs are part of a larger trend called “ugly fashion.”

Emily Brayshaw, who studies fashion culture at the University of Technology Sydney, says the idea started as a high fashion trend back in 1996 when Prada released its “Ugly Chic” collection. That concept has since trickled down to casual wear, with young consumers still buying ugly clothes almost 20 years later. 

“Ugly dressing is kind of a sartorial backlash against, like this super slick, corporate marketing sort of world,” Brayshaw said. “Day-to-day life is kind of ugly, and comfy, and messy, and fun, and why not lean into that?”

The trend includes a wide range of funky styles, such as clothes that are several sizes too big, exaggeratedly flared jeans and mismatched colors. 

Apart from coming in different colors, most Crocs look about the same. They can be customized with another product Crocs sells called Jibbitz, small plastic charms that pop into the clogs’ holes. 

Anthony Russo says his Jibbitz mainly consist of things he likes, like pizza and Marvel’s Avengers. The 500-plus different Jibbitz available on Crocs’ website include everything from professional sports logos to Hello Kitty. 

“It’s all about, if you like, creating your own ugly, curating your own aesthetic, and really sort of expressing yourself,” Brayshaw said. 

Ugly dressing aside, 91% of Gen Z consumers say that they want to buy from sustainable companies, according to PDI Technologies. But Crocs are made of a plastic that is bad for the environment called ethylene vinyl acetate, more commonly known as EVA. 

“When we do surveys, 80% of Gen Z tells you that ‘I’m willing to pay 15-20% more for a pair of shoes if they’re sustainable and biodegradable.’ We sold no shoes to Gen Zers,” said Stephen Mayfield, a professor at UC San Diego who is also CEO of the biodegradable shoe brand Blueview. 

Gen Z isn’t alone. A 2024 PwC study found that consumers of all ages claim they are willing to spend 9.7% more for sustainably produced goods, but notes that doesn’t always translate into actual spending due to other factors like inflation. Some researchers refer to this difference between moral values and spending habits as the intention-behavior gap or ethical consumption gap.

According to a study by researchers at Konkuk University in South Korea, wearing plastic shoes releases microplastics into the environment over time. This means that Crocs made of EVA also shed microplastics as they wear out. Crocs did not respond to a request for comment. 

“Like when you walk around in your sneakers and the bottoms are wearing out, you’ve ground them into microplastic which has now entered the environment,” Mayfield said. 

New research shows that these microplastics eventually make their way into human bodies, with a University of New Mexico study finding rising concentrations of plastic in our brains. 

Crocs has promised that by 2030 at least 50% of the materials that go into its shoes will be more environmentally friendly. Although that doesn’t necessarily mean the clogs will be biodegradable, it’s a step in the right direction.

Many Americans have been in a “vibecession” for a few years now, feeling economically squeezed despite all traditional indicators – inflation, the jobs report, manufacturing – mostly saying otherwise.

But with economic uncertainty growing yet again as consumer sentiment and confidence retreats, people are becoming more and more concerned that an actual recession may be on the horizon.

While economists continue to monitor traditional indicators, internet users have been making their own observations about the economy based on the state of culture.

These so-called #RecessionIndicators range from observations based on current events, such as wearing workwear everywhere or DoorDash linking with Klarna for payment plans on food, to just plain humorous – like debating on whether or not to take the rest of the liquor with you after a hang out. 

Theories that link economics and culture are not new: note the lipstick effect, the hemline index or the newer recession pop phenomenon. The economy can have a big effect on culture and the way we consume it – and vice versa.

“Culture has a really powerful impact on society and the economy,” said Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at the University of Southern California, Price, and author of several books at the intersection of culture and the economy. “It’s very hard to pin down and pinpoint, but we know it to be true.”

Some cultural economic indicators have long been debunked, such as the hemline index, which emerged during the Great Depression and stated that women’s skirt lengths rise and fall with economic booms and busts, respectively. Or the movie index, which stated that people packed theaters for escapism during downturns — thanks to the rise of streaming and lingering effects of the pandemic, theaters are off to a bad start this year. 

But others, like the lipstick index and men’s underwear index, still hold true. (The men’s underwear index, popularized by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in the 2000s, states that men’s underwear sales drop during recessions, as men are willing to wait a bit longer to buy new ones in times of economic stress.) 

“Consumer items like fashion goods have always been used by economists to make a point,” said Lorynn Divita, a professor of apparel design and merchandising at Baylor University. “It takes an abstract economic concept that some people might have problems visualizing, and it uses a tangible good that we all have experience with to make the concept relatable.”

Take the lipstick index, which suggests that during economic downturns, people forgo more expensive products for small luxuries like lipstick. It was first coined by then-Estee Lauder chairman Leonard Lauder during the recession of 2001.

Divita said the lipstick index is merely an example of the substitution effect, or when the demand for a product changes because its price changes compared to other products. 

“…But rather than talking about the substitution effect, which might seem kind of intangible to people, if you talk about the lipstick effect and how people will switch from large indulgences to small indulgences during times of economic duress, it suddenly makes a lot more sense,” said Divita.

The lipstick effect did not hold true during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were wearing masks and switched to other small luxuries like mascara or nail polish. But the principle remained the same. 

“There’s always a disruptor in there,” said Divita.

The economy can also influence culture in general, as shown by the recession pop phenomenon. The sudden uptick in hyper-pop-ish dance music – Charli XCX’s “Brat” album, for example – is reminding listeners of similar songs made during and following the 2008 recession, such as Kesha’s “TikTok” or the Black Eyed Peas’ creative output.

Based on his research, Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College of Music, said he speculates that music is split into two groups during times of economic stress: social commentary or escapism.

“So you could say, ‘Times are hard, so let’s sing about that,’ or ‘Times are hard, so what the hell, let’s party,’” said Bennett.

Of course, this partying serves as a convenient distraction from worrying about, say, the price of eggs, or groceries in general. 

While the term is linked to the economy, Bennett said it also serves as a way for people to be nostalgic about the music of their youth.

“Maybe in 2035, we’ll talk about COVID pop,” said Bennett.

Though #RecessionIndicators like recession pop are often in good fun, fears about the economy can sometimes serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy as people adjust their spending habits accordingly.

“When the market gets jittery, it’s kind of a recursive loop. It’s the same with consumers,” said Currid-Halkett. “When people get a sense of things, that there’s going to be a downturn, their behavior changes. Now is that true of everyone? Is it long standing? That remains to be seen. But I think that’s just human psychology.”

​Mortgage applications at Bank of America jumped 80% between January and March. Some of that is seasonality with the spring home-buying season kicking off, but not all.

Typically the bank sees about a 60% increase in applications this time of year. In January, mortgage rates were hovering around 7%. By March, they’d come down closer to 6.5%.

Allen Seelenbinder at Bank of America said in this market even that small of a dip can make a difference. 

“The slight change in interest rates and also the slight increase in housing inventory,” Seelenbinder said, adding that both helped drive up mortgage applications recently.

Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com said it’s too early to say whether that’s a good sign for the housing market with other recent data being mixed. Pending home sales, for example, are down almost 4% compared to a year ago.

“Mortgage applications are up, but pending home sales are down,” Hale said. “That might suggest that more buyers in the market today are using mortgages as opposed to cash buyers.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean more people are buying homes. Chris Mayer at Columbia Business School said there’s not much to indicate the market is really picking up.  

“Overall the spring selling market is kind of a bit slower than people kind of hoped it would be,” he said.

Some of that is perennial affordability issues, but Mayer also said some of it is uncertainty.

“The nervousness in the economy, the nervousness about policy, there’s some of that that is hitting the housing market,” he said.

With headlines about car prices, and other goods, potentially spiking soon, Mayer said people may be wondering if now is the moment to buy a home.

When Sally Brown finds herself with food scraps and no available compost pile, she takes matters into her own hands.

“I’ll surreptitiously put it outside,” said Brown, a research professor and soil scientist at the University of Washington.

“Compost is a way to effectively feed your soil,“ she said. “When I go someplace where there’s no composting, I get very upset.”

Brown does that because organic material exposed to oxygen — you know, decomposing in a compost pile or surreptitiously tossed behind a bush — creates CO2. But organic material rotting in landfills creates methane, which has a much larger climate impact than CO2. “So getting stuff that rots out of landfills is a very cheap way to quickly reduce carbon emissions,” said Brown. 

At least, in theory. 

Landfills account for roughly 14% of all U.S. methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This means that that slice of the emissions pie could get way smaller if we were better at closing the gap between organic waste producers — households and businesses — and compost users. 

The problem is that most of us don’t live near farms that can readily use the lawn trimmings or avocado skins produced in our homes. That’s where companies like Agromin come in. 

Agromin is one of the largest organics recyclers in California. Bill Camarillo, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said his company handles about 1.2 million tons of organic waste per year but hopes to make that 10 million tons over the next decade. “I’m on a 10 million ton march,” he said. 

In a receiving yard in Santa Paula, California, about an hour from Los Angeles, trucks carrying green waste collected from households and businesses dump material onto large piles. “But as you can see, this material hasn’t been cleaned yet,” said Camarillio.

Agromin employees work to clean plastic garbage out of green waste. (Maria Hollenhorst/Marketplace)

A couple of employees were pulling plastic bags and other noncompostable garbage out by hand. Once that’s done, the waste gets pushed into a grinder to create more surface area, which helps speed the decomposition process. 

Roughly 80% of Agromin’s revenue comes from something called tipping fees. Cities and private companies that haul waste pay Agromin about $60 per ton to accept the organic material their trucks collect. 

Camarillo said the other 20% of the company’s revenue comes from turning that waste into mulch or soil additives that farmers, landscapers and individual gardeners can buy. “It’s kind of like a vitamin we put back in the ground that’s alive,” he said. 

The material here is mostly yard and farm waste; there were piles of rotting lemons discarded from a nearby grove. 

After cleaning and grinding that material down, Agromin moves it to an adjacent yard for “finishing. “And you’ll notice a distinct difference in odor,” Camarillo said. “Not that this is bad — smells like money to me — but if you go to the other side, it smells very earthy.”

Bill Camarillo, founder and CEO of Agromin, at one of his company’s compost centers in Santa Paula, California. (Maria Hollenhorst/Marketplace)

Decomposition naturally raises the temperature enough to kill pathogens. The entire process — from the time the material hits the ground to being ready for application on a farm — takes at least 45 days. “Then, it’s off in a truck going to a ranch somewhere,” Camarillo said. 

One factor driving this industry forward is a California law known as SB 1383, which requires cities to divert more organics from landfills and purchase a certain amount of finished compost based on the number of residents in their communities. It’s meant to pull on both the supply and demand sides of the compost market.

That law has helped Agromin grow its business as a compost broker for jurisdictions trying to comply. 

“So, I’ll just take a city of Ventura as an example,” Camarillo said. “They called me three years ago and said, ‘What am I supposed to do with 8,000 tons of compost?’”

For some jurisdictions, Agromin helps identify ways to use that material, such as on parklands or in city landscaping. For others, they find farmers and other end-users willing to accept the compost.

A field of avocado plants grow in mounds of Agromin’s compost. (Maria Hollenhorst/Marketplace)

“We partner with a farmer under a direct service provider agreement, where the farmer agrees to accept the compost from the city that the city buys and will pay for the delivery and the spreading so the city only has to buy the compost,” Camarillo said. 

One thing that helps reduce that costs is putting compost facilities closer to compost users. The Santa Paula facility is actually on farmland owned by a company called Limoneira, which grows citrus and avocados. 

“This is where we are applying all the stuff that comes from Agromin,” said Edgar Gutierrez, Limoneira’s director of farming operations, in a field of avocado plants sitting on mounds of mulchy compost. 

There are visible reminders that the compost there once came from a landscaping operation or someone’s green bin, like a piece of blue plastic or a chunk of a wooden shipping pallet. But mostly, it just looks like dirt. 

“It’s basically giving life to that soil,” said Gutierez. Eventually, that soil will grow avocados — the skins of which we mostly throw away. 

Avocado plants growing from mounds of compost — called berms — provided by Agromin. (Maria Hollenhorst/Marketplace)

In 2024, there were more than 65,000 train thefts in the U.S., which is a 40% increase from the year before.

It’s perhaps a surprising number when, in the American imagination, train heists seem to belong in previous centuries. However, not only do they clearly still happen, all that cargo theft accounts for somewhere between $15 and $35 billion in annual losses.

So what is going on?

Malia Wollan is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. She joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to talk about where this resurgence in theft is coming from, and who ends up responsible for the losses. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

Kai Ryssdal: You think “train heist,” and you think guys in masks and six shooters and horses and all of that. That is not this.

Malia Wollan: That is not this. Modern-day train thieves are a whole different thing. There’s no guns. There are bolt cutters and mechanized saws and deserts.

Ryssdal: How does it work?

Wollan: Yeah, so there are a couple different ways it works. The sort of most extreme version is thieves actually go out into more remote parts of California and Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and they cut the air compression brake hoses that run between train cars, which forces an emergency stop. And then they cut the locks off the containers, they unload what they want, and trucks come pick it up and they drive away. But oftentimes a conductor or an engineer doesn’t even know a heist is happening. I mean, some of these occur when a train is stopped to let another train pass, and basically it’s happening three miles back. They have no idea until, you know, maybe another train passes and calls the train police dispatcher and says there’s theft underway.

Ryssdal: You know, we’ve all seen freight trains, and they look, to the layperson’s eye, you know, basically indistinguishable. But you talk about this guy in this piece who spent time figuring out what the symbology means and how to decode what’s inside and figuring out, like, what cars he ought to hit and to maximize his take.

Wollan: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, people can do a lot of research online, and there’s also a lot of cases where there is insider information, either from warehouses or from the port or from train yards. I heard stories of very specifically targeted crews, like there are crews who only go for tires. Apparently, there’s a good resale market. There are crews that only hit train cars that carry new cars, and they go inside and they take all the catalytic converters out of new cars, and then they leave.

Ryssdal: They’re specialized labor, right? I mean, that’s what they’re doing. Cargo is insured, as you point out, and security is not something that these companies are interested in investing in.

Wollan: Yeah, you know, it’s complicated. I think shipping is very cheap, and people all on the supply chain are reticent to make it expensive. And just the sheer volume of stuff going on the rails, you know, at a certain level, people are, I think, willing to take some level of risk. But, that said, there are a lot of different types of law enforcement working on this issue, including, you know, companies like Nike have their own loss prevention and asset recovery teams that go out and do detective work to try and get the stuff back.

Ryssdal: The catch, of course, is that you’ve got the railroads, you’ve got the companies who own or are shipping the cargo, you’ve got police bureaucracies involved. So it’s a little bit tragedy of the commons, right? It’s this thing that’s happening that there’s no one person who’s, like, responsible.

Wollan: Yeah, that’s true to some degree. A fair amount of this work falls to local law enforcement. It’s like rural Sheriff departments, so, you know, they don’t necessarily have the resources to put a lot into this. And also, the train companies, the rail industry, has changed a lot in the last decade or so. They’ve cut 30% of employees and they’ve made longer and longer trains, so there are also fewer people looking after longer and longer trains.

Ryssdal: And then, you know, not to bring it all home to the consumer, but we’re the ones paying the high prices because, or higher prices because all these, you know, Nikes, for instance, are getting stolen.

Wollan: Yeah, that’s right. And in the case of rail, you know, shippers don’t have a ton of options. It’s essentially a duopoly. On the West Coast, there’s just BNSF and Union Pacific. So it’s not as though, you know, you hear one rail company’s having issues with theft, you have a bunch of options of where you can go. There’s just two companies.

Ryssdal: And we should point out here, shipping by rail is so much cheaper than shipping by truck, right?

Wollan: It’s cheaper and it’s also fewer emissions, so there are definitely reasons to want to ship by rail, but, to be clear, this is definitely happening in the trucking industry as well. So cargo theft, writ large, has increased quite dramatically.

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the federal government paused student debt payments. When they restarted more than three years later, the government told delinquent borrowers that missed payments wouldn’t impact credit scores until fall of 2024. Now the reckoning has arrived. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has a new report out this week estimating that more than 9 million delinquent borrowers could soon see a hit to their credit scores.

Dustin Gibson has received letters from his student loan servicer over the past year, but he hasn’t really looked at them too hard. 

“I’m an avoider by nature,” said Gibson, who is a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University.

He’d been dutifully making payments toward his $185,000 in student debt, then stopped during the pandemic-era pause. And he hasn’t started making payments again.

“I mean, we’re 43, and we finally felt like we could breathe,” he said. “The car is being repaid off in three months, we can, like finally, begin to tackle some of the credit card debt.”

Gibson also said it’s unclear to him what’s happening at the federal level with the public service loan forgiveness program he’s enrolled in. And he doesn’t mind if his credit gets dinged.

But Constantine Yannelis, a professor of financial economics at the University of Cambridge, is concerned about all delinquent borrowers.

“This could lead to lifetime consequences, right? Because if people have damaged credit scores, it’ll be harder to do things like buy a home,” he said.

Yannelis said that could affect how much wealth they accumulate in the long term.

“So they may have less money in retirement, and we could be seeing the echoes of this problem for decades to come,” he said.

Which would hurt not just them, but the overall economy.

Even people who make payments on their student loans are having to sacrifice elsewhere, like DJ Anthony Gaffield.

He was helping his family after they lost their home in the Altadena wildfires in California, but Gaffield has institutional student loans dues.

“Then I was like, oh, shoot, I can’t pay my family anymore, just because you know you got to pay this monthly or pay this quarterly, until it’s absolved,” said Gaffield.

He’s also had to ask his landlord to let him delay paying rent.

To say that a lot is happening in and to the U.S. economy feels like an understatement. And just as people are having a hard time keeping up with the happenings, the actual economic data is too.

So where can economists, or even regular people, turn to understand the facts and the trends when the economy seems like it’s being pulled in 1,000 different directions?

Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, co-authored a piece in Harvard Business Review titled “The Economic Data You Need to Make Decisions Through Volatility.” She joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal to talk about the “alternative” data she’s tracking to discern the patterns in the chaos. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

Kai Ryssdal: Let’s do a level-set here for a minute and have you tell me what you were looking at to gauge this economy, say, three months ago.

Martha Gimbel: Three months ago I was looking at the very standard set of economic data, right? So the monthly jobs report, what we were seeing on the [gross domestic product] side, throw in some inflation measurements there. But it was a lot of the standard data that you get a news alert about on your phone.

Ryssdal: And now I read in this paper that you did with some colleagues that’s in the Harvard Business Review and also your social media feeds, you say, “To be honest, it feels increasingly like early COVID. Not because the economy is going to shut down, but, given the pace of events, we need to look at data we don’t normally rely on to understand this economy.” What are you going to look at now?

Gimbel: So some of it is data that comes out from the government, but just comes out more frequently. So, weekly unemployment insurance claims — that gives us a quicker sense of how things are pivoting. But this is also a time where we need to think a little bit about alternative data sets, like data from private-sector companies. So for instance, Indeed, where I used to work, just put out data on how federal employees are responding to DOGE. I want to emphasize that private-sector data is not a substitute for public-sector data, but it does move faster. And so at a time where you’re trying to figure out if the economy is at a turning point, it can be useful to look at some of these alternative data sets that just move more quickly.

Ryssdal: We should say here, though, that there is government data that is disappearing from government websites. There are not unfounded questions about the future reliability of government data as it serves the political needs of the administration. Where are you on the trusting-maybe-have-some-doubt scale right now?

Gimbel: So I’m trusting government data until I don’t. There’s currently no sign that the data that’s been coming out about the economy from the government has been futzed with in any way. And frankly, if it were, I think we would know both because of the way that it comes out it would be easy for economists on the outside to tell, and also because, frankly, the career staff would throw a fit and we would find out from them. That being said, years ago, I spent a lot of time yelling at people whenever anyone tried to question government statistics and saying, “This is paranoia. This is a conspiracy theory,” and now it’s a real question. And just to take a step back, I don’t think people in the United States realize how strong our national statistics apparatus is. Economists in France, Germany, Australia, those countries would kill for the data infrastructure that we have here that helps us better understand our country, and our economy, and design better policy off of that.

Ryssdal: So, let’s talk about some of the things you are watching, and I assume will continue to watch as, as they serve your needs. And there’s a list of them in this paper that you all wrote. Here’s one: daily Treasury statement non-interest government spending. So should I stop doing the numbers every day and instead we should figure out the music for whatever it would be for the daily Treasury statement non-interest government spending segment, right?

Gimbel: Well, I mean, for now, the music would just be kind of toddling along, but, you know, that’s one that looks at the amount of spending the government is doing. But I think that’s particularly important given the conversations around DOGE and the questions around is a pullback in government spending going to slow down the economy? And what you’ve seen right now is there really isn’t any sign in the aggregate that the government is stopping spending in any kind of substantive way.

Ryssdal: Take off your economist hat for a second and put on your regular person hat. If I’m just trying to get by in my life and I’m watching all the chaos in the news, and, you know, price levels are still elevated and I’m a little worried about uncertainty, what should the layperson be looking at to have some sense of what this economy is all about?

Gimbel: I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of being good at talking to normal people, but, you know, I think this is a moment where it’s really important not to confuse emotions for facts, right? Emotions are running really, really high, and it is easy to feel like the economy is going to crash because things feel so uncertain. But if you look at the data, that is just not yet what it is showing. And so it is very important to distinguish the vibes from the facts on the ground.

Estimating the GDP of this entire economy — which now stands just shy of $29.2 trillion — is a work in progress. 

The Bureau of Economic Analysis just gave us its mostly final estimate: the economy grew at 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024.

That number tells a story of where the economy was headed coming into this year. That story has taken a turn.

2024 was kind of the end of the post-pandemic party. Not a hangover — just, the party kind of died. No more pent up demand; government stimulus mostly done. 

“And that massive wave of growth that sort of peaked in 2023 with over 3% GDP growth had kind of slowed to about 2.5% in 2024,” said Jonathan Pingle, chief U.S. economist for UBS. 

At the beginning of this year, it looked like 2025 was also going to be all about a gradual slowdown. But now the slowdown is looking a little less gradual. Pingle took his estimate of growth this year down from 2% to closer to 1.5%.

“You are reaching the point where the tariff actions are becoming less of an inflation concern and more of a longer-term growth risk concern,” said Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. “The uncertainty alone is going to drag on growth.”

Businesses hold off on decisions when they don’t know what’s happening, and consumers spend less when they’re anxious. When economic growth slows down to about 1%, the economy reaches a tipping point, said Pingle.

“If you get down below, say, 1% GDP growth, you start to put yourself in a position of job gains turning negative, and then, all of a sudden, the labor market is actually contracting,” said Pingle. 

But Pingle doesn’t think we’ll get there this year. Neither does Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute. 

“It’s very hard to make the U.S. consumer stop spending. There are a lot of consumer consumption categories that are kind of very stable, especially more on the services part,” said Levanon. 

Uncertainty and tariffs may slow the economy, but he said they don’t look like they’ll be enough to stop it.